the olympic ideal?

Like many of you, I’ve been watching the Olympic games this week. I’ve been at turns moved and amazed by the athletic performances that I’ve witnessed.

And sickened on occasion.

I can’t embed this boxing clip from earlier this week, but it’s amazing—in it, Japan’s Satoshi Shimizu beats the bejeebus out of Azerbaijan’s Magomed Abdulhamidov in the final round of their match, repeatedly knocking his opponent down, which in Olympic boxing, should end the bout. For reasons that seem a-whole-lot-less-than-the-Olympic ideal, the referee allows the contest to continue, repeatedly giving Abdulhamidov an opportunity to get back up, and then, despite the whipping, the judges award the match to the guy who spent the majority of the time on the canvas. The announcers throughout it are particularly entertaining as their disbelief grows then finally erupts into outright disdain for the entire sport by the end. Classic.

In retrospect, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised—I mean, if you can’t cheat at the Olympics with only about A BILLION people watching, then why even bother, right? Sheesh.

Still though, I do enjoy the Olympics, even if it is a bit over the top at times. The opening ceremonies were not exactly an exercise in restraint, and the fawning TV coverage of every move Team USA—did you know as of Sunday, China actually had the most gold medals and more medals than the U.S. overall? Couldn’t tell by NBC, that’s for sure. It makes almost gets you to the point where you start rooting for other countries, especially in sports like basketball where American players like to tell the world how great they are even before the first game is played. Hard to embrace that.

In fact, some of the sports are hard for me to embrace. You can’t convince me that “women’s” gymnastics are anything other than sanctioned child abuse. As I posted on Facebook the other day, I just can’t see how training that hard and for so many hours at such a young age doesn’t result in long-term issues, both psychological and physical. Plus, the pressure they put these kids under, and for what? “I got a shiny piece of gold that says I was better than everyone else at a skill that’s not really all that important for a few minutes.” Then if they don’t win the gold—which the majority of them just can’t—will they spend the rest of their lives thinking about how their childhoods were wasted? Just seems cruel.

In addition to gymnastics, I’m not a big fan of competitive diving, synchronized swimming, that thing with the hula hoops and streamers—any of the events that involve judging as opposed to contests that are decided objectively by whomever runs the fastest, jumps the highest, throws something heavy the farthest or the team who scores the most points. Now I’m not saying you have to purge those subjective events completely from the games; rules modification is certainly an option.

For instance, put all the gymnasts on a giant set of parallel bars at the same time, and whomever is left hanging on at the end wins the gold. I’m thinking instead of synchronized swimming, there could be something a little closer to an aquatic battle royal, where everyone gets in the pool at once, and then try to throw each other out until there’s one left floating, either face up or down. A diving champion could be determined by either raising the board higher and higher and seeing who can survive, although I wouldn’t be opposed to something like this—

Now that deserves a medal!

Recently, Charley Monagan, the editor-in-chief of Connecticut Magazine and the man who is directly responsible for my professional writing career—and indirectly, who you can blame for what you read here—has written about a few forgotten Olympic competitions, including the tug-of-war and the plunge. Good stuff.

I think there should be some new events added. For example:

Competitive eating – Sure, that Kobayashi guy might be a shoo-in for a gold, but the U.S. can counter with Joey Chestnut, although there may be someone lurking in Mississippi waiting to take a bite of biggest American appetite.

Competitive drinking – This might be more of an interesting contest as you would think that certain countries rally around stereotypical beverages—Germany, Canada and Ireland enjoy various warm and cold beers; Mexico parties with tequila; Japan goes for sake; Russia loves its vodka; the U.S. drinks whatever can be made into jello shots; etc. But according to the World Health Organization, the gold medal winner in this contest might come from the tiny nation of Moldova, which I’m pretty sure is either a made-up place from a Seinfeld episode or lorded over by Dr. Doom.

“Ninja Warrior”/”Wipeout” – Any sort of obstacle course that requires either incredible physical strength, agility and endurance to scale Mount Midoriyama like “Ninja Warrior” or simply has the crazed hazards like human catapults in “Wipeout” would be a true challenge. It’d also be ratings platinum! Platinum, I tells ya! Speaking of …

Creating reality TV shows – Seriously, there is NO country on the planet that makes more of these than the U.S., with the possible exception of Japan. I’m pretty they’re actually some sort of sophisticated TV virus or bacteria that’s reproducing and only when it’s too late it’s overwhelmed us will we realize that there was an electronic pandemic.

Handfishin’ – Take one of them thar Oly-im-pic pools, a-fill it with catfish, then let a few good ol’ boys get in and see how many of them critters they can pull out in a minute or two. I would guarantee the U.S. sweeps this, but there’s a chance that some of the poorest countries in the world might be familiar with the concept for foraging for food without any sort of equipment. (Lookin’ at you Best Korea.)

Grasscutting – Only because all those years while growing up when I was mowing lawns at our various homes, I fantasized about it being a competition to get me through the tedium of it. “Here he comes, the kid from Milford, he’s setting a world-record time … look at the edges … the lines … this kid’s a natural like this sport has never seen before. He is a true champion, through and through …”

Yeaaahhh … that, and this post, is about as close as I’m getting to “the Olympic ideal.”